Bluetooth Stereo for your Treo

[Bob Russell]

Once a handheld device like the Treo 650 is released and it gets used every day, we find things we wish it could do, and looks like it should do, but can't. We want decent handling of playlists for audio players, or features like louder Treo call volume as provided by VolumeCare. Or we would like to text message the caller as with SharkMsg when not answering a call.

Well, we can now add one more feature to the list of 3rd party solutions. Bluetooth stereo. Until recently, you could not listen to stereo or mono music on a headset via a bluetooth connection on your Treo due to the Bluetooth version implemented. But with Softick Audio Gateway it appears that limitation has been lifted.

From the product web site: "Softick Audio Gateway is the first Bluetooth audio streaming solution for Palm OS handhelds which allows to connect Palm OS handheld to the Bluetooth stereo headphones and listen to digital audio played by Palm OS applications:

* MP3 Players,
* Audio book readers,
* Games.

Softick Audio Gateway can operate with any Bluetooth audio device which supports Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) designed to transfer a high-quality stereo audio stream wirelessly."

It would be interesting to see if this also works with bluetooth cell phone headsets to play mono audio in a single ear, or if it only works with stereo headphones. If it does work with the typical bluetooth phone headset, this could be quite a hit.

So what else can be added to the Treo functionality? Voice command (such as giving commands to dial a contact) from a bluetooth earpiece would sure be nice. On the Windows Mobile side of things, the existing voice control software needs a higher bitrate than what current bluetooth headsets provide. That may also be the issue with the 650.

It will come someday, with some smartphone. And can you imagine how nice it would be to have an earpiece with caller id or verbal caller id, and the ability to anwer or intitiate a call all from the earpiece? That would be pretty impressive, because the actual smartphone could then stay in a purse or pocket the whole time.

Via PDA 24/7